Virtual reality: Unique treatment sought for vets

SANTA FE — Researchers in pockets of America are treating shell-shocked soldiers with computer simulations of the very war zones that scarred them.

Using the sights, sounds and even smells of war may sound counterintuitive to helping a veteran haunted by chilling memories. But the treatment is effective for those warriors with post-traumatic stress disorder, said Skip Rizzo, a professor and associate director of the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California.

Now a New Mexico lawmaker, Rep. Dianne Hamilton, R-Silver City, wants to bring virtual reality treatment to the state.

Rizzo said he believed Hamilton's bill was the first state legislation to embrace the idea that computer simulations properly applied can make life better for those who have experienced snipers, roadside bombs and perhaps the maiming or death of a buddy.

Hamilton, R-Silver City, is seeking $250,000 over four years to establish a pilot program that would treat New Mexico veterans through virtual reality therapy.

The program would be based at Western New Mexico University, Hamilton's hometown school, where social workers would be trained in the therapeutic use of the computer simulations. The state Department of Veteran Services would administer the pilot project in conjunction with the university.

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Hamilton, whose husband and three of her children are military veterans, said she was naturally drawn to a program to help soldiers who have returned home.

She said virtual reality therapy can be a lifeline for those tormented by what they went through in Iraq, Afghanistan or other war zones.

"We know it works," she said. "With three computers and some headgear, it's pretty simple to establish."

She first introduced the bill for virtual reality treatment in 2012. It died in that session, which lasted only 30 days.

This year, with the Legislature meeting for twice as long, Hamilton said she hoped to persuade fellow lawmakers that the bill would reduce long-term costs by lessening the need for chronic care of veterans.

She went through a computer simulation herself. Virtual reality took her to a street in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, one of the most violent places a soldier could be in the last decade.

Hamilton, 78, said she was unbothered, but that she had not been in war. The sights and sounds triggered no memories in her.

But Rizzo said a trash-strewn street in a soldier's hometown may remind him of the spot where a roadside bomb exploded or an insurgent gunman took aim at an American Humvee.

As veterans confront haunting memories, they can and do reduce the emotional trauma of post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

Some researchers even think that using virtual reality therapy on raw recruits can inoculate them to the horrors of war before they see it.

Hamilton knows about the stress of combat from a different perspective.

Her husband, John, was a pilot in Marine Corps. He went to Vietnam at 34, nearly twice the age of many soldiers deployed to that war.

She said his letters home, all of which she kept, are a reminder of his poise, maturity and skill with words. But younger soldiers may not have been so emotionally equipped to handle war and all the fallout from it, she said.

Rizzo said virtual reality is an important step in treatment. It can create a climate where a veteran whose memories have been bottled up has to face them.

An outgrowth of the therapy is that veterans become more likely to talk to clinicians or friends, Rizzo said. In addition to training social workers, Hamilton's bill calls for an outreach program.

Therapy would be offered to veterans in rural areas through the use of mobile virtual reality devices.

Meantime, the Department of Veteran Services would be obligated under the bill to seek grants and donations for the pilot project. It also would establish a fund that would be used to help continue providing therapy to veterans through virtual reality treatments.

Hamilton's proposal is House Bill 36. She is introducing it with the endorsement of the Legislature's Military and Veterans' Affairs Committee.
Milan Simonich, Santa Fe bureau chief of Texas-New Mexico Newspapers, can be reached at 505-820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com